Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
an open letter to WTOP News
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 24, 2023
The author submitted the following suggestions to WTOP News today in the hopes of convincing the news outlet to stop promoting the hateful Drug War narrative.
1) regarding coverage of DC killings. In 2014, Ann Heather Thompson wrote the following in the Atlantic: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence 1 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist." Yet most media outlets in the country write as if the rising inner-city gun violence 2 is inexplicable. I request that WTOP start connecting the dots between prohibition and gun violence 3 , for it was prohibition that incentivized the disastrous arming of the hood in the first place, leading to the creation of no-go shooting zones that, to America's shame, have remained in force for almost half a century now.
2) Regarding your coverage of drugs like Fentanyl and MDMA 4 and laughing gas : Please remember ALL the stakeholders in the drug debate. When we demonize drugs rather than understand them, we throw pain patients and the depressed under the bus, by forcing them to go without godsends -- or without adequate doses of godsends -- because doctors are afraid to prescribe. There's a call now for the outlawing of laughing gas . That's throwing millions of the depressed under the bus. I hope that WTOP will remind its readers, by way of context, that the philosophy of William James was inspired by his use of laughing gas 5 and that he himself said that we must study altered states in order to understand ultimate reality. "No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." But disregard them we must if prohibitionists have their way.
3) Please be sceptical of anything that the DEA reports. They have a vested interest in seeing that there is always a drug problem. Their multi-billion-dollar budget depends upon it. I suggest that you have your reporters read "Synthetic Panics" before they report government drug information as gospel truth. It tells how the DEA leverages local drug misuse into a series of national crises with the help of agitprop documentaries on shows like 48 Hours. "The New Face of Fentanyl 6 , the New Face of Ice, the New Face of Crack, The New Face of PCP 7," etc. NIDA 8 is not a good source either, for they fund studies only on abuse and misuse - never on positive use, meaning they are truly a propaganda arm of the US government.
If these suggestions seem controversial, please consider that Donald Trump won the 2016 election because of the Drug War, whose draconian laws sent millions of minorities to jail, thereby depriving them of the right and/or the ability to vote. In fact, that's clearly the REAL reason for the War on Drugs: like GOP redistricting, it's a way to let the far right steal elections. 37,000 people are killed by cars every year, but we do not need to outlaw cars: we need to teach safe driving. Just so with the modern scapegoat called drugs. We have created all the problems by ensuring dangerous uncertain drug supplies for users, meanwhile absolutely refusing to teach them safe use - for the insane reason that this might encourage use. Use is not bad in itself. To say so is Christian Science.
In short, please stop reckoning without the Drug War. It has huge negative ramifications on a free society. Please start pushing back with smart coverage that connects the dots between today's problems and our disastrous drug policy. The kinds of drugs we demonize today have inspired entire religions. As Trump's propaganda-aided election has shown, America can have democracy or it can have a Drug War, but it cannot have both.
Author's Follow-up:
April 08, 2025
Imagine a world in which the media covered other risky activities the way that they cover drug use.
We would see the following newscasts:
Killer Horses
NEWSCASTER 1: Yet another Boulder County teenager has been killed by a horse. 15-year-old Constance Noring was riding alone on Shadow Canyon Trail last night when her palomino horse slipped and fell, precipitating both animal and rider down into a 300-foot ravine.
NEWSCASTER 2: How terrible, Bill!
NEWSCASTER 1: Apparently, Constance had been boasting to her friends just recently that she could, ahem, quote-unquote, "handle a horse."
NEWSCASTER 2: She failed to realize, Bill, that NOBODY can handle a horse.
NEWSCASTER 1: You got that right, Sue.
NEWSCASTER 2: Christopher Reeves thought HE could handle a horse.
NEWSCASTER 1: What we're saying is, kids: just say no to horses. Fair enough?
Plane Silly
NEWSCASTER 1: The slaughter continues. Yet another deadly plane crash in the U.S., this time in Michigan.
NEWSCASTER 2: That's right, Bill. Planes have killed a total of 352 passengers in the United States alone since the year 2000.
NEWSCASTER 1: That's right, Sue. It makes you wonder: when will the madness end?
NEWSCASTER 2: Not until Congress wakes up and outlaws those death traps that we call airplanes, Bill.
NEWSCASTER 1: Right enough, Sue. Right enough.
Shark Bait
NEWSCASTER 1: Sharks continue to kill with impunity along the beaches of Central Florida. Another young white shark victim has been reported in Volusia County.
NEWSCASTER 2: In today's op-ed piece, Channel 9 General Manager Ella Vader makes the case for an aggressive extermination campaign against the killer fish. Stay tuned.
NEWSCASTER 1: Before anybody starts calling the ASPCA, remember that it is the welfare of our KIDS that we are talking about here! Humph!
NEWSCASTER 2: That's right, Bill. A nation is judged by how well it takes care of its poor little innocent white children.
The Bamboozled 1980s
As much as I blame the modern media for kowtowing to the drug-demonizing ideology of the Drug War, they were worse in the 1980s, the decade in which it was considered "hip" to turn in your very parents for using substances of which politicians disapprove.
The most cringing and unforgivable act of media kowtowing to Drug War sensibilities was performed by then-NBC correspondent Tom Brokaw. I do not remember the exact words that he used, but I certainly remember the gist. He was wrapping up a drug-related story when he said something to this effect about the Drug War: "We are waging a war, after all, and we all have to do our part."
Brokaw was ahead of his time when it comes to bowing and scraping before the racist demagogues of drug prohibition. It still turns my stomach just to think of that episode. I would like to say that it turned my stomach at the time, however, I was still at least partially bamboozled in the 1980s. I always realized at some level that the Drug War was nonsense, but I still had not seen through all the misdirection and lies that the Drug Warriors were using to get me onboard -- like the most mendacious public service announcement in human history, the one in which the Partnership for a Drug Free America 9 told us that our brains would be fried by the use of the kinds of substances that had inspired entire religions.
The execs who created that lying ad should be put on trial with the DEA for working to deprive the world of godsend medicines.
Many psychedelic fans are still drug warriors at heart. They just think that a nice big exception should be carved out for the drugs that they're suddenly finding useful.
What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.
Conservatives say they're against Big Government -- but they let bureaucrats decide what medicines they can use.
"I can take this drug that inspires me and makes me compassionate and teaches me to love nature in its byzantine complexity, or I can take Prozac which makes me unable to cry at my parents' funeral. Hmm. Which shall it be?" Only a mad person in a mad world would choose SSRIs.
I have yet to find one psychiatrist who acknowledges the demoralizing power of being turned into a patient for life. They never list that as a potential downside of antidepressant use.
The DEA conceives of "drugs" as only justifiable in some time-honored ritual format, but since when are bureaucrats experts on religion? I believe, with the Vedic people and William James, in the importance of altered states. To outlaw such states is to outlaw my religion.
Racist drug warriors make cities dangerous with drug prohibition -- then they use that danger as an excuse to send in the National Guard.
In fact, there are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
We've got to take the fight TO the drug warriors by starting to hold them legally responsible for having spread "Big Lies" about "drugs." Anyone involved in producing the "brain frying" PSA of the 1980s should be put on trial for willfully spreading a toxic lie.
Americans outlaw drugs and then insist that those drugs did not have much to offer in any case. It's like I took away your car and then told you that car ownership was overrated.
(up)